Yacht taken over by squatters

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tillergirl

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Yacht on the mooring in Salcott Creek now has a Seagull Nest and at least one egg avec a Mum on the nest and Dad looking bad tempered on the boom. I thought it a Common Gull but it might have been a small Herring Gull. Incubation 24 to 28 days, young fledge at 5 weeks. Not the best.
 
I don't see many common gulls around here, but that may be because I'm not very good at looking, as my wife keeps reminding me. I saw some at Abberton last year but most of those that I have seen were in the Baltic, where they are the default gull. There used to be one nesting in the corner of a bar's verandah in Heiligenhafen, protected by chicken wire and quite a celebrity for several years. The bar was called 'seagull shit', as was a bottle of drink that I gave to our son-in-law.
 
tillergirl said:
Yacht on the mooring in Salcott Creek now has a Seagull Nest and at least one egg avec a Mum on the nest and Dad looking bad tempered on the boom. I thought it a Common Gull but it might have been a small Herring Gull. Incubation 24 to 28 days, young fledge at 5 weeks. Not the best.
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Call in Pest Control!!!
 
matthewriches said:
Little naughty thing! You need a cat onboard!
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We had a little Siamese cat. One day she absolutely refused to go out of the kitchen door. She practically yelled at me and, insofar as a cat can point, pointed at the garage roof. A mature herring gull was perched on it, looking at the cat with interest, and she clearly had no plans to form his lunch.
 
I was talking to my wildlife guru this morning. He spent the weekend going to the Blackwater from the Colne and tells me that black-headed gulls are well down in numbers locally. He sends reports of these things to the the RSPB.
 
I had a gulls nest on my foredeck moored at Conwy near the castle. The nest was about 4ft across and had a number of eggs. Although reluctant to disturb the nest as it was the start of my annual holiday I carefully collected the centre of the nest complete with eggs and without touching the eggs transported them to a suitable spot near the bridge in the tender. I then had to climb to a low tree to position the nest safely from predators,being dive bombed by an angry mother gull all the time. Before I had got back into the tender the mother was back in her smaller nest doing her hatching thing. When I got back from a fortnights sail the nest had been re-built to its previous proportions and seemed to be populated by a number of gulls.
 
I had the strange reverse experience of gulls tidying up a yacht last Sunday. I was on my mooring in Ray Channel and noticed the building wind had unravelled a furling genoa on a Westerly Centaur (I think) over in Strood Channel. It was on the last mooring, and as I closed on it in the dinghy, it looked pretty abandoned. As I drew alongside the leeward side, I saw two gull nests, one comfortably in the helm's seat and the other on the foredeck. I tried to drop the genoa, which was flogging mightily by this time, but the halyards were in an unholy tangle, and the reefing line had disappeared, so I loosed the sheets from the winches and manually rolled the sail, and secured it rolled up.

The interesting thing was the wheeling parents-to-be were quite happy for me to roll up the flogging sail (one other sat intently watching me from the next mooring buoy), and showed no aggression. When I was less than thirty yards from the boat, both parents had returned to their nests, and I'm sure they gave me a wink. But I doubt it will stop them crapping all over my boat...Gull nest.jpg
 
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